South Orange‑Maplewood leaders present lean 2025–26 preliminary budget, warn of a "fiscal cliff"

The South Orange‑Maplewood School District’s leadership presented a lean preliminary budget for 2025–26 at a virtual town hall, urging residents to prepare for sustained austerity while the district works to avoid what presenters called a “fiscal cliff.” The superintendent said the district has been advocating in Trenton for changes to the state funding formula and warned, “You will hear the phrase fiscal cliff many a times moving forward. We are trying to get ahead of that fiscal cliff.”

The presentation, delivered by district finance staff and the superintendent, laid out revenue, enrollment and expenditure projections. The business administrator said the budget assumes a 2% local tax levy increase, a health‑benefit waiver of about $850,000 and a 6% increase in state aid—listed in the presentation as roughly $619,000—while noting many neighboring districts lost state funding this cycle. The slide deck presented a total revenue projection for 2025–26 of about $192 million and broke revenue sources into roughly 83% local tax levy, about 7.9% state aid, 1.5% maintenance reserve use, 6.7% budgeted fund balance and 0.7% other local revenue.

Officials highlighted several items that tighten the district’s…